The Times reprints the following paragraph from its issue of Monday, December 1, 1828:
Perhaps the best illustration of what I would impress upon your readers - namely, the disreputableness of the body - will be analysing the members returned into the (Dublin) Common Council by the senior guild, namely, the guild of merchants, and which sends 31 representatives into the Common Council. You will judge of the kind of merchants selected for this honour when I inform you that the person at the head of the list is a clerk in the Bank of Ireland, with a salary of about 150/-. a year, if so much; that of the remainder 30, seven or eight, and some of them within a few months, have passed through the Insolvent Court, not having been able to attain even to the dignity of the bankrupts' calendar; that one of them had been dismissed from the Post-office in which he was clerk, for very sufficient reasons indeed; and that of the remainder, there are not six who even keep a shop. - Irish Correspondence.
The Irish Times
December 3rd, 1928.